Lost and Found
by GothGirl1996
Summary: One night Gibbs stays behind in the Squadroom and he knows something is wrong when Ducky doesn't appear to leave. He seeks him out and discovers a secret he never knew his best friend had. But what if the lost secret can be found and a family restored? Gibbs is determined to do whatever he can to help his best friend out.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Ducky?

Gibbs sat behind his desk in the squad-room as his team all left for the night. Tony left with Ziva whom he'd got engaged to a month ago; then came Jimmy Palmer on his way home to his wife Breena accompanied by McGee and Abby. Abby carried her overnight bag which Gibbs had seen once or twice.

"Camping out, Abs?" Gibbs asked as she passed his desk with McGee. Abby smiled and McGee stifled a laugh.

"They're still deflooding my apartment, Gibbs and I'm staying with Tim tonight." She pecked him on the cheek in a daughterly way.

Gibbs smiled and nodded knowingly. "Alright. Take care of her, McGee. Goodnight."

"I will, boss. Goodnight." Tim said kindly and Abby waved as they followed Jimmy to the lift with Tony and Ziva. Once the lift bell had sounded to signify their leaving, Gibbs sighed and looked towards the stairs. Ducky should be up by now. Ducky was always the last to leave before Gibbs as he was usually signing autopsy reports. But it had been quiet today, very few corpse's had been delivered.

Gibbs was concerned now and grabbed his belongings before making his way downstairs to the morgue in search of his best friend.

He found him, sat at his desk, glasses in one hand, the other held a photograph frame. Ducky's shoulders were shaking... Gibbs was stunned. Ducky was crying. Gibbs stepped through the sliding doors as they opened and even then Ducky didn't look up.

"Duck?" Gibbs asked as he neared the desk. He had to ask twice more before the kindly doctor looked up, eyes red with tears.

"Oh, Jethro. I was just coming..." Ducky began but Gibbs stopped him from putting the photograph away and pulled up a chair and sat beside the M.E.

"Are you alright, Duck?" Gibbs asked and Ducky took a deep breath. He knew it was pointless to lie to Gibbs, he'd know.

"No, Jethro, I am not." Ducky said exhaling.

"What's up?"

"I was remembering... Someone. I wasn't keen on leaving earlier. Mother and I... We fight on this day, every year."

"Why?"

"It's the one night she remembers, dementia and all, she remembers and we fight..." Ducky replaced his glasses and looked at the photograph frame before handing it to Gibbs. "We fight over her."

The photograph contained the image of a young woman, aged about 16 or 17 with dark hair and Ducky's wide smile. It was in black and white but the woman must have had Ducky's grey eyes. Gibbs smiled. "She's beautiful. Who is she?"

"My daughter. She was my daughter." Ducky said in a voice, so quiet that if the morgue were buzzing with the sound of electrical equipment and lights (the only light being Ducky's desk lamp), Gibbs wouldn't have heard him.

"Pardon?"

"My daughter. Iona her name was. She was 18 there." Ducky said again with a small smile as he pointed to the photograph Gibbs held.

"Ducky? You never told me you had a daughter." Gibbs said stunned as he handed the photograph back.

"I wanted to... After you lost Kelly and Shannon. To tell you I knew how you felt... But I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't know if I could trust myself to open that vein again and talk about her."

"What happened to her?"

"I lost her. Ten days after that photograph was taken."

"Lost?"

And so began the tale of Iona Mallard, Ducky's daughter.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The beginning

Edinburgh, March 12th 1980.

A younger Ducky Mallard emerged from the hospital dressed in his best suit, sporting the bow tie his friends had bought him with his wife on his arm. In her arms lay the sleeping form of their daughter, a newborn of a few hours. Ducky's mother stood beside him when he reached the bottom of the steps and he wrapped one arm around her waist as they reached her. Victoria Mallard beamed with joy and happiness at birth of her first grandchild- her granddaughter. She had dreamed of such a day for many years.

"Mother... Meet Iona Victoria Marsaili Mallard. Your granddaughter." Ducky smiled as Marsaili, his wife, handed the infant to his mother. The tiny infant stretched beneath her swaddling and Victoria smiled and cooed as the baby opened her eyes. Grey eyes, like Ducky and Victoria. Victoria herself felt tears welling in her eyes.

"Oh, Donald. You're father would be so proud if he were here," she looked down once more at the baby. "She is definitely a Mallard but their are aspects of the Campbell's in her. You can tell."

"Aye, that ye can, mother." Ducky smiled, slipping into his broad scots. Marsaili laughed gently and smiled at Ducky as he lead them all to his car- a 1961 Ford Falcon- and then on to the house Marsaili and he shared with his mother which sat on a hill above Edinburgh itself.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Happy

Ducky smiled as he paused in his story, Gibbs plucked the bottle of scotch from the bottom drawer of Ducky's desk along with two tumblers. He filled them both a measure as Ducky looked back at the photograph of young Iona.

"Marsaili died... When Iona was five. In a car accident with some friends coming back from a trip to the highlands to visits her grandfather. A year later, I moved mother, Iona and myself here to start... Not a new life but to start again and carry on." Ducky took the tumbler Gibbs offered him and drank. "I loved her you know.. Marsaili. I had known her since we were wee children of five and six. She became a nurse, you know, the same time I became a doctor."

Gibbs nodded and the spoke softly. "Were you happy?"

"As happy as anything. Iona adored her mother and I felt so guilty taking her away from the one place she had been happy with her mother, when I moved her here. But when she was a bit older she understood why and forgave me... But she never forgot."

Gibbs nodded, and drank from his tumbler. "You said you had lost Iona... What happened?"

Ducky took a deep breath before continuing.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Washington DC, March 22nd 1998.

Iona was walking down the street, her college satchel on her shoulder. She had stayed longer in the campus library than planned but she knew her father wouldn't mind, she had called him at work to tell him she was running late, from the pay phone in the library's atrium. The guard, a friendly man known to everyone as Duke had seen her out and walked her to the gates of the campus to make sure she was safe. Usually her journey home was taken in daylight, but tonight it had gone dark quickly because of an oncoming thunderstorm. The dark clouds above were pregnant with rain and threatened to give birth at any moment. It was however drizzling and she pulled her mackintosh tight around her and pulled up the collar against the drizzle. She could hear the water bouncing off the pavement behind her and she quickened her pace, determined to get to the bus stop before the heavens opened anymore and she was caught in a downpour.

As she neared her stop on the corner of the street, she heard footsteps step into time behind her and a car squeal as it skidded on the wet road as it rounded the corner ahead of her. Iona ducked under the bus shelter beside the street lamp which flickered as the electricity began cutting out across the town, the footsteps followed and then passed by, an older man and his greyhound who dipped his hat to her as he passed. Iona nodded in return. The street was silent for many moments and several minutes passed with Iona continually checking her watch- her bus was running late.

She began thinking that she should have had Duke call her a cab from the uni, she would have been home by now. Suddenly someone, mostly likely a man from the girth of his hand and the strength at which he held her fast, grabbed her from behind and smothered her screaming mouth with a handkerchief soaked in... Chloroform or something similar, the scent distinct to her having helped her father many a time with operations before he became a medical examiner and coroner. She resisted and fought all she could to no avail as the drugged darkness consumed her, she even tried reaching for the small knife she kept in the top of her boots... Her sgian dhu, or hidden dagger as her father called it, only to be used in emergencies... Like the situation she found herself fighting against.

Her last thought "Oh, crap... Da's going tae kill me if I don't get out of this..." Before everything fell into darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Lost

"Mother rang when she didn't arrive home, and I began trailing the streets in my Morgan for her. I drove up near the university, to her bus stop even, where I found her book bag and her sgian dhu... hidden dagger," Ducky added seeing Gibbs' face marked with a look of confusion at the Scottish terminology. "After that when I got home I rang Tom Morrow, who was director at the time to tell him. He got half the navy yard and the special agents out looking for her as she went to college with Tom's son, James and his daughter, Grace. James even went out in his car with Grace to search their usual haunts where they spent time together, just in case she was there... But they didn't find her either."

"Did anyone have a suggestion as to what had happened to her?" Gibbs asked, pouring Ducky another Scotch. The doctor drank from it and shook his head.

"They assumed she had been abducted and I never received a ransom note or anything so we had no leads. James and Grace didn't give up searching for over a year and neither did I. Everyday when I finished work I would drive around the city looking to all the places we used to visit and the places she liked to go with friends or on her own... I later discovered James never gave up because he was in love with her... With Iona."

Gibbs looked at the photograph and smiled slightly. "Can't say I blame him." This made Ducky smile and chuckle slightly, though there was no real life or energy within it.

"She took after her mother in that respect." Ducky said and pulled out his battered leather wallet, flipping it open to reveal his bank cards and a pocket which he opened and pulled out its contents. Two battered, faded photographs and a heart shaped signet ring... Sized to fit a young woman. One of the photographs was of an infant Iona, smiling in a younger Ducky's arms, the second a dark haired woman and a baby- obviously Marsaili and Iona. Ducky handed them to Gibbs and then picked up the signet ring between thumb and forefinger, gazing at it lovingly, a reflective smile on his face. "This was Marsaili's, her promise ring I gave her when we got engaged... Iona used to wear it on a chain around her neck whenever she went anywhere, even to college so she felt like her mother was close to her. It was found among her book bag items. It has lived here ever since." Ducky indicated the wallet he had left open on the desk.

"I'm so sorry, Duck. I had no clue." Gibbs said.

"It wasn't the same situation... Shannon and Kelly died... Iona was and is lost. I don't think she died, if she had, I think I would have felt it, I would have known. In here." Ducky added pointing to his chest, just over his heart with his free hand. "Every time the victim is a woman at the crime scene, I pray against everything and to everything that it isn't her. Navy or civilian, I pray it isn't her. Even when we don't know the victim's name and I bring them back here, I always check the women's hips for a tattoo and a birthmark. A sign which would tell me it was Iona. So far that hasn't happened, thank God... But still, I'd. Rather know what happened to my bairn... My Iona."

"We'll find her, Duck. Even if the worst has happened, we'll find out the truth, for you and your mother." Gibbs vowed and placed his hand on his friends shoulder. Ducky looked at him, tears rimming his eyes again.

"Thank you, Jethro." He paused and took a deep breath. "Its her birthday today... March 12th. She's Thirty-five today. I probably would have been a grandfather by now. I would have liked to be a grandfather."

"You would have and may still be a wonderful grandfather. I can't think of anyone better to be a grandfather." Gibbs said, grabbing Ducky's coat and trilby. "Come on, let's head home and we'll start investigating tomorrow." Ducky nodded, riding from his seat and picking up his things before brushing his finger against the glass of the photograph, turning the desk light off and following Gibbs from the morgue.

"Happy birthday, leannan." He whispered as the door shut behind him.


End file.
